Chapter 16: Surrender

“So ... how do we do this?” Walker asked, the gigantic Queen watching him with her blue eyes. She reached one of her lower arms down between her massive thighs, using one of her long fingers to open her loins, of a similar size and configuration to those of the other castes that he had encountered during his tour of the hive. Despite her impressive stature, her reproductive organs were not scaled up appropriately, no doubt so that the five-foot-tall males could still mate with her. It was odd to see such a comparably small organ attached to such a large creature, and he watched as the three, finger-like appendages that encircled her opening flexed and writhed in anticipation.

<COME TO ME, > she said, her four long arms outstretched in invitation. The rest of the Drones and Workers looked on, a hundred eyes fixated on Walker as he took a few tentative steps forward. Were they really just going to do it right here in the middle of the Queen’s chamber, with everyone watching? Perhaps it was his human hangups talking, but he felt oddly embarrassed.

<FEAR NOT, I WILL NOT HARM YOU.>

Come on Walker, man up. You might be able to end the war and save everyone on Jarilo with just a few thrusts.

Once he was in range, she reached down with her lower arms and gently closed her hands around his torso, lifting him off the floor. He was like a doll in her grasp. She was at least twice as tall as the average human, and her body was immense, her ornate headdress alone must have weighed as much as a man. She deposited him on the fleshy egg sack upon which she sat, it was soft and squishy, with the texture of foam. It had looked slimy from a distance, but it was actually dry, and he could feel the muscles shifting beneath him as he looked up at her.

Her torso was as tall as he was. If he were to stand up, his head would scarcely have reached her chest. She supported him with her lower arms, his legs splayed across the rounded surface of her egg sack, and she looked down at him expectantly.

“Oh, right...”

He unzipped his pants, unable to remove them in this position, exposing his member. It seemed tiny in comparison to her, but he had to keep in mind that she was made for mating with the winged Drones, who were only a head shorter than he was. Talk about performance anxiety ... he was having a hard time getting it up due to the bizarre situation that he had found himself in. When he had first joined the UNN, he had known that he would be making sacrifices for the cause, but he had never expected to end up in this predicament.

The fate of the planet depended on his ability to get an erection.

The Queen released a pulse of pleasant pheromones, perhaps conscious of his difficulties, and Walker found himself swooning as the scents washed over him like a tide. Suddenly he was in a field of flowers, the scents of roses, lilies, and daffodils wafting on a summer breeze. There was fresh cut grass and the smell of baking asphalt on the air, he could almost feel the sun on his face.

He came to, staring up at her as she blinked at him. She wasn’t psychic, couldn’t have known what her pheromones were making him smell and taste, but her intent had been to calm him. As with all of the other scents in the hive, his brain could only translate the information that was fed to it by his new organ, and this information had drudged up memories of relaxation and peace. How long had it been since he had last visited a botanical garden? How long since he had felt the warm rays of Sol on his face?

He had been quite fond of horticulture in his day, a natural extension of his interest in biology. He had almost forgotten that aspect of his own personality, lost to the years of war and turmoil, as if his brain was replacing old memories like a computer overwriting old files.

Walker had spent so many years fighting in mud, in lifeless deserts, on barren ice plains where no plant could ever take root. Jarilo was the only place that resembled Earth, the only planet that he had visited during his many tours of duty where there might one day grow roses and lilies. If humans were ever to live here, if civilization was ever to take root on Jarilo, then it would have to be alongside these aliens.

“I’m ready.”

Her hands roamed across his body, even larger than those of Kaz, examining his clothing. She had seen what it was through her many eyes and she used her pointed fingertips to gently pry open his jacket to expose his chest. She ran them across his skin, cocking her enormous head, no less curious than the Workers or the Repletes had been.

<I HAVE SEEN HOW YOU MATE, SCOUT SNIPER. I WILL TRY TO MAKE THIS PLEASANT FOR YOU. THE MORE SEED YOU PROVIDE ME WITH, THE BETTER.>

“You can call me Walker,” he muttered. If he was going to sleep with someone, they might as well be on first name terms.

<WHY?>

“It’s my name.”

<AN HONORIFIC?>

“No, it identifies me as an individual.”

<ODD, BUT PERHAPS APT FOR CREATURES WITH SUCH A POOR SENSE OF SMELL.>

The Betelgeusians had no need of names it seemed, or rather each member of the hive had its own subtly different scent that distinguished it from its fellows.

Walker was no stranger to large women. Borealans were eight feet tall, and they weighed half a ton, but the Queen was even larger than that. It almost didn’t seem physically possible to mate with her. Then again it made sense. Not only were the Queens of social insect species like termites and bees far larger than their male counterparts, but females could be dramatically larger than males in many other insect species too. In fact, when you considered all of the different animal species on Earth, it was the mammals who were unusual in their sexual dimorphism. Reptiles, birds, fish, and insects all favored the female over the male in terms of size and strength.

He was a little nervous, the Queen could have torn his arms and legs off like a child pulling the legs off a spider if she had been so inclined, but her touch was surprisingly gentle. Everything about her was hard and tough, from her armored carapace to her sharp fingers, and yet her demeanor was soft and considerate.

He shivered as he felt her long fingers run down his spine, pressing into his skin to trace his vertebrae as she roamed down towards the small of his back. Her hand was so large that her thumb and heel could rest on his chest as her fingers explored his back.

<YOUR PHYSIOLOGY INTERESTS ME, WALKER. I FEEL ELECTRICAL CURRENTS RUNNING THROUGH THIS COLUMB OF INTERLOCKING BONES.>

“My spine,” he clarified, surprised by her apparent electroception. Bees could sense electromagnetic fields, and so it was not unheard of in insects. Still, she must be sensitive indeed if she could feel the faint electrical discharges produced by his nervous system.

<WHAT PURPOSE DOES THIS STRUCTURE SERVE?>

“It’s kind of like a carapace, but on the inside. It protects my more delicate organs and nerves, and it serves to anchor my muscles, amongst other things.”

<IT LEAVES YOU ... SOFT ON THE OUTSIDE.>

She seemed to be enjoying the texture of his skin, following the lines of his musculature with her fingers, her hard exoskeleton rich with sensitive nerve endings. She combed them through his hair, tickling his scalp as she examined him, her slow massage helping him to relax.

Walker was just as curious about her body, but he couldn’t reach much of it. She towered above him, almost two storeys tall if she had been standing, more like some kind of monument than a living thing. Her parted thighs were the size of park benches, her waist so thick around that his arms would not have met on the other side if he were to wrap them around her.

He reached out and ran his hand across her belly, at least what he could reach, the top of his head barely skirted her chest plate. She had the interlocking armor that was common to the other castes, giving her a bumpy texture despite her carapace’s smoothness.

The Queen began to release more of her pheromones, powerful and insidious, creeping into his brain like probing fingers. There was no need to resist her now, the deal had already been made. Besides, it might ease things along. He allowed the scents to wash over him, pink and radiant, a deeply sexual musk lingering in his nose. He could taste her in the back of his throat, sweet and comely, akin to the honey that the Repletes produced.

The pheromones had been powerful when he had been actively resisting them, but now they were overwhelming, tugging at his senses and playing with his memories as if someone had opened up his skull and was crossing wires as they pleased. It was euphoric, almost like being drunk but with none of the associated dulling of the senses.

He felt himself becoming hard almost immediately as the sordid scenes from his past ran through his head like an obscene slideshow. Fragments of barely remembered encounters seemed to flash before his eyes, felt as much as they were remembered. Humans were rarely aware of the fact, as weak as their natural sense of smell was, but scent was powerfully linked to memories and the emotions that were associated with them. The olfactory bulb, the part of the brain that processes smell, ran through the amygdala and the hippocampus. The two areas of the human brain that were associated with emotions and memories. While the senses of sight, sound and touch were far more developed and prominent, the areas of the brain that dealt with processing those experiences did not pass through this region. The phenomenon was very prominent in sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder especially, where certain scents could trigger vivid flashbacks that bordered on waking nightmares.

In Walker’s case, he was treated to rich and detailed recollections, as if he was reliving the moments from his past. The effect had been strong with the other castes, but the Queen’s pheromones were a cut above the rest, powerful and commanding by their very nature. It was like he was being given a double dosage, his body squirming in her grasp as the sensations washed over him.

He felt the silken skin of an old lover beneath his fingers, truly felt it, as if she was really there with him. He could feel the smoothness of her body, his hand tracing the subtle curve of her hip, made slick by her sweat. They were in a dingy room, it stank of cigarettes and fucking, but there was also the prominent smell of her lavender perfume. He remembered how she would spray it about her shoulders, Walker burying his face in the nape of her neck as he bit and kissed, her body writhing beneath his as she pushed up to meet his thrusts. He had been a young man back then, energetic and aggressive, naive. While their love had not lasted, the memories of it still lingered. He could almost taste the salt of her sudor on his tongue.

He was jolted back to the present as he felt the Queen’s hand on his lower back, pulling him closer to her as her alien loins spread in invitation, the three prehensile fingers parting to grant him access. He felt as if he was in two places at once, two times, his visions so vivid as to challenge reality itself.

In one moment he was in the hive on Jarilo, his member pulsing as it neared the Queen’s dripping opening. In the next he was back in a hotel room on some barely remembered space station half a Galaxy away, taking advantage of a day or two of shore leave to enjoy a local woman, some waitress who he had met that same afternoon. She was young and nubile, gyrating atop him as he sank his fingers into the soft flesh of her ass, her auburn hair cascading over his face as she leaned down to kiss him. He could smell the soap that she used, her flowery shampoo, he could taste the copper flavor of her passionate embrace as her tongue slid into his mouth.

It was like a dream, almost alarming in its intensity. Walker was not accustomed to being unanchored like this, not in control of his faculties. In a way, it was oddly liberating.

He forced himself into the present, reaching out to run his hands across the Queen’s armored thighs, the tactile sensation grounding him amidst the flood of memories. He was at full mast now, harder than he could ever remember being. He was beside himself, his chest heaving and his heart pounding against his ribs, red-faced and wanting. The Queen had no velvet skin to caress, her body was hard and hostile rather than soft and yielding, yet the memories that she conjured had him longing for her touch.

He found himself pressing his cheek against her abdomen, his fingers resting on the hard shell as they traced the softer, pink meat between the plates. She felt alive, her body responding to his touch, warmer and more receptive than he had imagined her to be. He pressed his lips against her belly, not really knowing what he was doing, but caught up in the storm of desire and emotion that was roiling in his head.

<AN AFFECTIONATE CREATURE... >

Did Bugs have any concept of affection? The Repletes seemed to show affection when they nursed, perhaps the Queen too could feel affection for her offspring, an extended family that he was soon to become a part of.

Was this really what he wanted? What was he giving up by agreeing to the bizarre terms of her surrender? He was not qualified to make this decision, that was up to generals and admirals who would surely second guess any promises that he made, and yet they were not here. Only Walker was here, only he could make this decision, a decision that could affect the lives of every human on the planet and all those who might call Jarilo home in the centuries to come.

No matter what he was giving up, no matter how his life changed after today, it was worth the price. The lives of his comrades back at the base, the life of Kaz and the Marine that he had fought beside on the wall, the lives of all the personnel who were deployed on Jarilo ... it was within his power to save them.

He felt the Queen’s prehensile loins grip the tip of his member, a jolt of pleasure coursing up his spine to make him shiver. Her hands were all over him, gripping him in a gentle prison of rigid fingers, her fleshy egg sack shifting beneath him as she edged him closer.

Her appendages slid down his shaft, hard carapace protecting the outside, but flesh like luxuriant silk lining the inside. It was soft and wet with her juices, its texture reminding him of a tongue or the inside of a cheek. She pulled back his foreskin with surprising dexterity and care, as if she had paid careful attention to his anatomy, exposing his tender glans to the warmth that she radiated. The resolution on those cameras must have been quite impressive...

The head of his erection pressed against the moist opening of her tunnel, shockingly narrow considering her immensity. It was no larger than those of the Workers or the Pilot who had ravished him the night before. He sensed a fresh flood of pheromones from his royal partner, communicating arousal, pleasure. She smelled so much like a woman, as if the very essence of all that was feminine and alluring had been condensed into a perfume and bottled. It tugged at his most base instincts, his member surging with blood and throbbing against her womanhood, Walker practically salivating as he slid his hand across her torso.

It was frustrating in a way. His senses insisted that he should feel wet skin, taut muscle twisting and flexing beneath a layer of delicate fat. His impulse was to push his face into his lover’s hair, taste her, sink his fingers into the doughy meat of her breasts.

Instead, there was only the Queen’s immovable bulk, encased in armor that was as hard as plastic. There was a little give to it, and it was pleasantly smooth to the touch, but it was no substitute for the tender body of an eager woman.

She hooked her thumbs beneath his jacket, opening it up and sliding it off him to expose his torso, her eyes staring intently as she ran her hands across his body. She was so tactile, her four hands were roaming everywhere, Walker twisting and gasping as they glided across his skin. If she could sense the electrical currents in his nervous system, what else could she sense? She could smell his every emotion as his pheromones leaked from his pores, she could watch his nerves light up with pleasure like she was flipping switches, perhaps she could see his body heat or sense his blood as it rushed through his veins as well. He was completely naked, not in the sense that she was removing his clothing, but in the fact that he couldn’t hide anything from her. Every twitch, every rush of excitement and arousal that coursed through him, she could read him like an open book.